'Forget about being original.' I was told in a seminar. By the creative writing teacher. (A moderately successful Scottish poet) 'Because everything has been written before. Nobody has ever created anything Totally original. Because we are all influenced By preceding literature.' Things get a bit Bloomian at this point. Which isn’t a bad thing. Just hold on in there and we’ll have some lyricism soon. There are no texts, Bloom says. Only relationships between texts. All poetry is a misreading of an earlier poem. And all criticism is prose poetry, says Bloom. Bloom says a lot of things. Some of which I believe. But mostly I disbelieve my elders. I don’t want to be indebted to the dead. Especially the ones I revere. A century and more since Bloomsday And has anyone got any further? All the modern novels I read Seem just like the old ones. When did we stop even trying? Because I don’t intend to. You figure out what I mean. So I try to be experimental. But experimental means what B. S. Johnson did in 1973. What Beckett did long before that. What Pound thought was clever When he wasn’t being a fascist. And all literature is experimental anyway. Because writers are always experimenting On the insides of their heads. Because every sentence is an experiment To see what it is possible to say. Because every line is an experiment To determine if self-expression is possible. To discover what needs to be said And whether or not it can be said. So you people will criticise this, You’ll say, where’s the imagery? The metaphors? There’s no similes, No use of poetic devices, no alliteration. The writer doesn’t even appear depressed or suicidal, So what the hell kind of poem is this anyway? And you’ll all try to define What a poem actually is. Just like the creative writing teacher. Who wanted us to all write like her. But perhaps the only way to create a new poetry Is to move away from writing poetry. Is not even to intend to write poetry. Because the term poetry Can only be defined with reference to what has gone before. To what already actually exists in anthologies. But I want to create something new Which isn’t included within the existing definition. So it might not actually be poetry In your current sense of the word. You see that The lights shone on forever and were so bright That their eyes continued to convey images and words But became also conveyers of pain Caused by the light’s brightness. But the eyes remained open Because the alternative was darkness Which is more frightening than damaged retinas And the smell of singed nerves. A hopeless situation: So they turned to their precursors for assistance But were secretly relieved when no succour came.